A City Power preliminary investigation revealed that illegal and unsafe electrical connections at the home of a Crosby couple played a part in their deaths.
City Power’s investigations found the property’s meter had been bridged and the earth was disconnected on the meter box which was inside the couple’s house. Spokesperson for City Power Isaac Mangena said, “This confirms our earlier suspicion that our network could have been tampered with leading to instability in the voltage. Further observation is that we suspect that the earth leakage on the customer’s box was faulty or tampered with since the meter was tempered with during the bridging.
” If there was an earth fault, the earth leakage should have tripped instead of shocking [electrocuting] the couple.”
Gauteng police confirmed that the bodies of the couple were found inside the shower of their home on 13 June and a day later the power utility’ chief executive officer Mongezi Ntsokolo requested a team to launch the investigation. City Power had contacted the family and have communicated these findings to them. Mangena added, “We have also decided to issue the family with a notice to disconnect their power until such time the legal requirements for safe connection have been established. The customer would need to follow the City Power reconnection process before we could reconnect them.”
City Power said Mayfair and Crosby were plagued by vandalism of electrical infrastructure, bypassing of City Power meters by both business and residential customers, and illegal connections. The last operation conducted to address these issues was conducted on 13 April and it included the inspecting of bypassed meters and removal of illegal connections.
City Power committed themselves to intensifying such operations in the near future and said they would send a metering team to the area including the family of the couple to normalise and replace any faulty meters.
